QUESTION: In four days 20 priests have died of Covid-19 and thousands of men and women are dying. How do you see in it the face of God the Loving Father?

ANSWER: I must say that we are getting a real taste of God through these incidents. We are shepherds, and so I am really proud of the priests who have shared the sorrow of our people. Death spares no one. Our faith tells that our God suffers with us, he cries with us and He grieves about the sad predicament of our people. For the last thirty years, some of us have been preaching the gospel of prosperity and misleading our faithful. That is being challenged drastically today through all these incidents. We should have been preaching the God of the New Testament.
More than God, the present situation tells us a lot about ourselves: our greed to gather more than we need and to make profit the ultimate value of our lives, total crushing of the poor through every established system, promoting a climate of violence to gain political ends and cruel destruction of nature and its habitations. I continue to work with my people, taking possible precautions, but if I have to die in the process working for my people, I will consider it as a privilege and pure gift from God, never ever doubting the invaluable presence of a loving God in this moment of history.

Bp Sebastian Adayanthrath
Mandya